


Drain the Whole Sea

by rhoswenmahariel (salutationtothestars)



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: The Last Court
Genre: Emotional Manipulation, F/M, Fade to Black, He's into it, Light Dom/sub, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, it's fine though, light blasphemy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-13
Updated: 2018-06-13
Packaged: 2019-05-21 17:22:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14919656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salutationtothestars/pseuds/rhoswenmahariel
Summary: “I suppose you remember the dream I had,” she says as her preamble, “about the Shame.” She puts one hand back where it was, taking the Wayward Bard by the wrist. His palms are warm, almost hot against her cool, naked skin. She likes the heat.





	Drain the Whole Sea

**Author's Note:**

> "The Château chantry, sealed these three generations as punishment for the Shame's excesses. The Divine may choose to unseal it, if she's very impressed. Or you could enter... if you can. If you dare."
> 
> "He lies with you. Perhaps he even loves you. Can you trust him?"

Ursule waits until he is inside her before she asks her question. Perched carefully atop the Wayward Bard, she rolls her hips to adjust for the girth of him. Then she does not move again. He groans, so deep she feels it reverberate through his body and into hers.

“Why are you stopping?” he asks, clearly making a strong effort to refrain from thrusting. He’s practically sweating, and not just from the exertion of their foreplay. “Have I done something to offend?”

Ursule represses a self-satisfied smile. “My mind is elsewhere,” she says, faux-airily, “though that is hardly your fault.”

It takes a surprising amount of work to maintain her aloof façade – though she keeps her expression carefully neutral, her hands and thighs quiver with desire. Elements of restraint and temptation often arise in her bed, but in all her conquests and sexual escapades, the denial of pleasure has never been her own. Lovers know better than to expect the Marquis’s submission. All the same, it is an interesting game, and she has yet to receive what she truly wants. Playing a little longer would at least serve to satisfy her curiosity.

She runs her fingers through the Bard’s chest hair, hoping the movement masks her traitorous trembling. “In any case, I will not be able to continue until the matter is settled.”

“And you waited until now?”

“It is inopportune,” she admits, tracing the outline of his nipple, “but at least I have your attention.”

The Bard chuckles breathlessly, and settles his broad hands on her hips. His calluses and blunted nails hint at pressure, a little squeeze of affection against which she tenses. “That,” he says, “and more.” With no more complaint, he moves to help her off him, already wincing with anticipation of her withdrawal. She goes nowhere. Instead, she gives him a pointed look and settles her weight further down, waiting for him to say no.

He furrows his brow, but the corner of his lip twitches into the beginnings of a wry grin. Relaxing his grip, he takes his hands away and settles them at his side, showily allowing her control over their only points of contact.

“I suppose you remember the dream I had,” she says as her preamble, “about the Shame.” She puts one hand back where it was, taking him by the wrist. His palms are warm, almost hot against her cool, naked skin. She likes the heat.

The Bard throws his free arm up over his head, huffing in mock irritation. “Please don’t bring up your great-grandfather in bed.”

Ursule ignores him. “There is a great deal about the Shame I cannot begin to fathom. Pieces of his history – my history – locked away where I cannot reach them. If I am to reach the heights he dreamed of, let alone surpass them, then I must learn in greater depth the mistakes that he made.”

He traces stretch marks and scars up the line of her leg as she speaks, starting with a thin line scant inches above her knee and finishing with the pattern of stripes near the swell of her ass. The first time they slept together without the aid of drink, he had asked her where each blemish came from. She gave perfunctory explanations, often nothing more than a word, and he teased her for her lack of romance. Scars were stories, he insisted, songs yet unwritten and waiting to be sung.

_“Then you are fortunate that I chose you to write them.”_

His thumb meanders the underside of her thigh, dipping in and out of grooves she forgets exist until she accidentally spots them in the mirror. He may know her body better than she ever has. “Is that what you want?” he asks her, softly. “To surpass him?”

Disgusted by the way her stomach turns, she flexes in retaliation. The Bard’s broken moan and the way he grabs at her, digging his fingers into her flesh, set her at ease. “Not in the way one might think,” she says. “I possess none of my great-grandfather’s innate talents, and neither would I want them. But to raise Serault where she belongs – to prove I am not the Shame and yet greater than he ever could be – I need to understand the man, not the pariah. I need more.”

More, she thinks, wondering if it’s her imagination that she feels his cock twitch inside her.

The Bard’s voice cracks, slightly, betraying his fraying nerves. “I hope this wasn’t all a ploy to lure me into a bramble maze somewhere,” he says, shifting uncomfortably. “I’m not built for the outdoors, you know.”

“Would you need rescuing?”

She means it as a jibe, but he surprises her with an expression she can only call earnest. “Never,” he murmurs, “from you.”

The Bard gave up his peasant girls for her, though she never asked it of him. He devotes himself slavishly to her, stealing secrets for her by day and warming her bed by night, and truly asks nothing in return. This… intimacy… she’s never known anything like it.

Ursule clears her throat and glances away.

“What I want from you is simpler, and requires less commitment,” she says, suddenly and terribly aware of her own nakedness. If it wouldn’t ruin her plan, she might have gotten up to put on a robe. Instead, she gives herself a mental shake, and commits to what she’s been building towards this entire conversation: “I want your help breaking into the Sealed Chantry.”

When she planned this, several days prior, she expected fuss, indignation, or some show at piety. Much as the Bard blasphemes, many of her subjects still closely follow the Maker. At the least, she thinks, he might express doubts, or even make a disconcerted face.

Instead, he raises one eyebrow. “Is that it?”

She blinks at him, several times.

“You have no concerns?”

“Ha!” he snorts. “I’ve been aching to hear what’s inside the damn thing so long as I can remember. It’s a mystery, and you know quite well that I love a good mystery. To play such a fine part, and to assist you? How could I refuse?”

Ursule nearly feels wrong-footed, thrown over by his lack of guile. She had prepared for multiple outcomes, even stored a knife under her mattress where she might have snatched it easily had he threatened to betray her. It wouldn’t have surprised him – he might have even been proud – but this readiness, this obeisance? To know that he reveres her more than the Masked Andraste herself?

It is frightening, and heady, all at once. Her muscles clench around the Bard, and they exhale at the sensation, in tandem.

“The Divine will not appreciate our going above her head in so serious a matter,” she says, unable even to resent that she speaks, without meaning to, in a throaty rasp. “I have planned for that, should we succeed.”

“Oh?” the Wayward Bard asks. His fingertips skate across her leg and up, and in, dipping briefly to caress the spaces where her thigh rests against his stomach.

“With the recent behavior of my cousin, the Marquis of Alyons, we should have little trouble convincing her he had the locks broken to indict me. Such a snake is capable of anything.”

He smirks. The heat of it pools low, in the depths of her being. Her pulse hammers beneath her skin. “Between the two of us,” he says, “I’m sure we can arrange the ideal outcome.”

She folds, then, and plants one hand above his shoulder for leverage while the other seizes his chin. Their lips meet in a messy open kiss, more desperation and panted curses than finesse. It has never been like this before – never so unplanned, uncalculated, fueled solely by the twin aches of her loins and her heart. This is new territory, she thinks with a half-crazed relish, rocking her hips against the Bard’s. A new discovery, a new promise – all hers. Theirs.

His hands finally move from where she placed them, threading through the short strands of her hair and fumbling at what they can reach of her breasts.

“I admit,” she says as she pulls away, biting his lower lip so hard she threatens to draw blood, “you surprise me.”

He sits up, forcing her backward, and wraps his arm around her hips to keep her close. “I am your man, Your Grace,” he whispers. “Every breath I have belongs to you. Command of me what you like, and I’ll do it.”

She leads him further still, down into the embrace of her mattress until he is on his knees above her. Raking her nails across his shoulders and down his chest, she wonders if Andraste envies the way her humble Marquis is worshipped.

“Fuck me, then,” she commands, and he does.

**Author's Note:**

> "To keep the Goddess on my side  
> She demands a sacrifice  
> To drain the whole sea"  
> -Take Me To Church; Hozier


End file.
